Sunday, September 26, 2010

fuel gauge

Today I was out flying the plane and I looked down and my left fuel gauge showed empty. Gulp, I know I had at about 40 gallons in there... looked out at the wing, fuel cap is secured... hmmm. Then it bounced back up to half. A few minutes later it showed empty again. Fifteen minutes later it seemed to go back to reading correctly and stayed there. Strange, must be a problem with the fuel sender. It made me think about getting a good engine analyzer though with a fuel flow computer. I've pretty much ruled out the JPI 760. It's just too old school for my high tech plane. Looks like 80's technology, and to make matter worse the only sensible slot in my panel would put it way over on the copilot side. A 760 in the stack makes no sense. Another option would be to put in the JPI 851, which is basically two JPI 730's side by side.

Looks good to me, I could pull out my Collins radio and my ancient Hoskins fuel totalizer, and maybe even get rid of my #2 transponer. I could then put these side by side in the radio stack... but don't I want RPM and MAP on there too? For that you need the 851 and they retail at $8700. Now I'm back into AuRACLE 2120 territory, a couple more AMU's and get a device certified for primary. hmmmm... I'd just wish they'd hurry up and release that thing so I can get some pireps...